I want to install Mandriva 2010.2 in my external USB HDD using the image file. The laptop's cd/dvd drive doesn't work, so I don't have the option of making a Live CD and starting the installation from there (which works well enough).
My external HDD has some an NTFS partition and a free partition in which I want to install Mandriva.
You have a couple options. One of them it to setup your boot manager (hopefully grub) to boot to the ISO as if it was a CD drive. You can find details on that in answers to this question.
Alternatively, you can you can punt an hack it by booting to the ISO using a virtual machine, and attaching your USB drive to the virtual machine. Then from the LiveCD running inside the virtual machine, run the installer using the usb drive as the target. You may run into some catches, but it can be made to work. This is the same technique I mentioned in answer to a similar question here.
1> You can try making a bootable USB thumb/pendrive from that Mandriva's disc image and then >> boot up from that USB drive >> keeping your external hard drive plugged in >> select the appropriate drive/partition during installation.
You can read this article here in order to "how to make a bootable Mandriva 2010 USB drive using Mandriva Seed Box"
2> You can try creating a persistence image of the installation. i.e. you can simply make a bootable USB pendrive of Mandriva which could run the exact live replica as in Live Disc but it would store/save all the changes made during runtime just like an actual OS installed. :)
You can create this by using any of the following tools:
3> You can try creating the bootable USB pendrive by using LiLi USB Creator (its a free s/w usewd to make bootable pendrives for nearly any linux distro :) )
OR
Universal USB Installer (get it here: pendrivelinux.com/universal-usb-installer-easy-as-1-2-3/) it is as same as LiLi USB Creator. (has a simple GUI not very fancy though :D as in LiLi)
